Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  The rocks continued to rain down, as if spit out of the sky, frames pinwheeling from the impact of the big .45 slugs. Jim traded a spent magazine for a fresh one and heard the crackle of the errant rocks smacking gravel, and the more distinctive thud when they struck flesh and bone.

  Gunfights were all different and all the same, dominated by the fog that covers a man’s consciousness when he’s shooting for his life. For Jim Strong, in the midst of those moments, there was the pistol, the trigger, the slight kick as the bullet blew out the barrel and tore through the air toward its target. Flesh and blood instead of cardboard.

  Jim recorded four downed bodies by the time he ejected his third mag without even remembering slamming it home and racking a round into the .45’s chamber. But then fresh fire erupted, sounding like a nonstop cacophony of firecrackers on the Fourth of July. The hail of rocks stopped as a few people dropped from the wall, victims of automatic fire.

  Thirty shots from an M16 take little more than a breath’s length to release, and Jim found the conscious thought he needed to sight in on the big man with no face who was trading his spent thirty-round mag for a fresh one. Jim let go all eight shots his way and was certain that at least one of them had hit, given the way the man’s absurdly broad shoulders twisted and his first spray from the fresh magazine was sent skyward.

  Then Jim was on the move, diving under the tanker that was still spewing water from its open spigots. He racked his final magazine home as he crawled to the other side, while fresh fire from the M16 kicked up gravel just short of his boots.

  Jim Strong reached the other side of the truck and propped his shoulders against one of the tanker’s dual tires, which could take a 5.56-millimeter round. But none came, and he popped up and curled around the tanker’s rear—just as he heard the engine of D. W. Tepper’s shot-up truck rev to life.

  Did I leave the keys in the ignition?

  Jim absurdly felt for the keys in his pocket, as Tepper’s truck limped forward on a blown-out tire and busted rim. The hail of gravel it coughed in its wake joined the steam bleeding from its radiator. The truck tore on in a cloud of its own making, out of reasonable range of his .45, which didn’t stop the Ranger from emptying his final magazine toward it.

  When the slide locked open, Jim Strong turned his gaze on the four gunmen he’d shot dead. The bodies of five people who’d been shot off the mission wall were lying not far from the gunmen, in the mission courtyard. But he had to put that out of his mind and focus on the desperate task that awaited him before the man with no face made it back with more shooters.

  “I’ll make sure the wounded get tended to, no questions asked, sir,” he said to Frank Aidman. “But first I’m gonna need to borrow your van.”

  91

  MARBLE FALLS, TEXAS

  “My truck was totaled,” Tepper finished. “Jim Strong never made good on it, but insurance picked up the tab.”

  They’d adjourned to a storage room that Tepper had converted into a small, windowless study on the second floor of the log home. It smelled of the same cigarette smoke that had stained the wallpaper. They’d entered with their clothes dampened by the drizzle but had dried out over the course of his tale.

  Caitlin let the story settle for a few moments. “From there, my dad buried the four men he shot, and those shipping crates, in the very spot where they were dug up last week.”

  Tepper nodded, looked like he was holding his breath. “Aidman sent a couple of the migrants with him to serve the cause. Helps explain why nobody ever found the spot.”

  “Until Jones hired Communications Technology Providers to find it,” Caitlin noted. “Only he wasn’t alone, and CTP ended up playing both sides against the middle. The dead principals of Bane Sturgess dug up the crates that, after they had the bad sense to open one of the ossuaries, were later clipped by the squatters who witnessed the whole thing. That all sound about right, D.W.?”

  “Your dad happened upon my truck in a drainage ditch, with its engine and both axles blown. Totaled, like I told you.”

  “And the man with no face?”

  “He was gone, never to be seen again.”

  “Until now.”

  “You think he’s back?”

  “Paz thinks he is. Surprised?”

  “You getting a shot at the man who escaped your father?” Tepper said, awash in the cigarette smoke that had settled stubbornly in the air between them. “Nah, not at all. Never know what the winds of Hurricane Caitlin are going to stir up.”

  “There’s something I haven’t told you, Captain. I heard from Cort Wesley. He’s on his way back from Atlanta. Alone.”

  “Come again?”

  “Never mind. He and Jones paid a visit to the CDC, where they learned what all this is really about. The story of that ossuary containing the remains of Christ was a hoax, passed on for centuries, meaning people have been dying for almost seven hundred years to protect a secret that isn’t real. But those old bones, that’s something else again. Turns out they had an entirely different story to tell,” Caitlin said, filling Tepper in on what Cort Wesley had learned at the CDC.

  He’d sunk into the study’s one chair by the time she’d finished. “The bubonic plague? Did I hear you right on that?”

  “A mutated version, some kind of spore, that brings with it a one hundred percent mortality rate.”

  “Your dad and me didn’t know a damn thing about that. We knew it had to be something, with those bodies in the train car and all, but the Black Death?” Tepper groped about the table before him in his tiny man cave for his pack of Marlboro Reds, shooting a caustic stare Caitlin’s way before he lit up. “This is my home, Ranger. And I’ll smoke in it as much as I please.”

  Caitlin didn’t bother protesting, watching him puff away, cigarette held in a trembling hand. He stopped long enough to open a small cabinet and take out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from inside, along with a single glass.

  “You need to keep a clear head, D.W.”

  But he proceeded to fill the glass halfway. “Oh, this isn’t for me, Ranger. It’s for you.”

  “How’s that?”

  Tepper extended the glass toward her. “See, there’s something else I need to tell you, too, one last part of the story about what happened between your dad and the Red Widow.”

  PART TEN

  As silly as this sounds, I think one reason we don’t have more females in the Rangers is because we wear Western clothes. Most females coming up through the ranks at DPS [Department of Public Safety] are from metropolitan areas, and they wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing a cowboy hat. Personally, I love it. I mean, I get to wear this and you’re going to pay me? That’s awesome. If I had been told, “Okay, you’re going to make Ranger, but you have to wear a dress and high heels every day,” I would have said, “No thanks.”

  — Sergeant Marrie Aldridge as quoted in “Law of the Land,” by Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly, April 2007

  92

  SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS

  Caitlin spotted Guillermo Paz rocking on the front porch swing, M4 assault rifle laid across his lap, as soon as she climbed out of her rental.

  “That’s Cort Wesley’s spot,” she noted, climbing the stairs.

  “The outlaw’s on his way here from the airport now.”

  “He ask you to watch over Dylan?”

  Paz kept rocking. “I almost got here too late. Boy’s okay, but he’s gonna be out for a while. Strange dreams, then a wicked headache when he gets up.”

  “What happened?” Caitlin asked, feeling her muscles tighten and flesh ripple, as something fluttered in her stomach.

  The swing creaked as Paz lifted himself off it. “There’s something you need to see inside.”

  * * *

  Selina Escolante sat tied up on the floor, her limbs bound together by a collection of extension cords that Paz had likely yanked from the wall sockets. He had looped them around her throat for good measure, so if she tried to jerk herself free she’d end up strang
ling herself. She was wearing a tight-fitting black shirt and raw denim jeans tucked inside black boots. Caitlin wasn’t sure whether it was the pair Dylan had lent her or not.

  Paz leaned over and plucked the balled-up dishrag from Selina’s mouth. “Tell my Ranger who you are.”

  “I know who she is,” Caitlin said, her stare chilling the air between them.

  The young woman coughed up a wad of spittle full of cloth fibers and smirked. “I heard your father only slept with two women in his entire life. Guess you figured out who the second is.”

  “You’re my sister.” Caitlin nodded.

  “Half sister,” Selina corrected, “but who’s counting?”

  “I should have known from the first time we met. I had figured you for twenty-four or so, but I didn’t do the math.”

  Paz handed Caitlin a small bottle. She read the label, eyes widening.

  “Why’d you knock Dylan out?”

  “For his own good,” Selina rasped, still coughing up fibers. “To keep him alive.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Actually, it isn’t.”

  “She told you who she was?” Caitlin asked Paz.

  “She didn’t have to, Ranger. I knew from the moment I first saw her.”

  “You’re Nola Delgado,” Caitlin said, “daughter of the Red Widow.”

  Nola Delgado bristled. “I hate when people call her that.”

  “Why? It’s well earned, given the number of men she’s killed. But I get the impression you’re not too far behind.”

  Nola seemed to take that as a compliment. “Wanna compare notes?”

  Caitlin shook her head. “I’m no match for el Barquero.”

  “He was a man.”

  “No,” Caitlin said, looking Nola right in the eye, “he’s a myth, which suits you just fine.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me how long I’ve known, Sis?”

  Caitlin bristled. “I’m not sure I care.”

  “El Barquero saved your life twice. How about some thanks?”

  “To you or your mother?”

  “A combination. She sent me up here to pick up the trail of that bone box somebody dug out of the ground again. I improvised from there. You mind untying me?”

  Caitlin flashed the small medical bottle containing fentanyl down at her. “What’d you mean about keeping Dylan alive?”

  “That he won’t be able to join us for the final battle, when I get that ossuary back for my mother. When you think about it, it’s the reason I was born.”

  The irony of that had already struck Caitlin, but hearing it from Nola Delgado, aka el Barquero, made her shudder.

  “I was thinking you’d have the endgame all figured out by now, where we can find my mother’s crates.”

  “What makes you think I’ll tell you where I’m headed? Why wouldn’t I just leave you tied up right there on the floor?”

  “Because you need my gun, Sis. You came back here to get your boyfriend and the big man. But it won’t be enough, not against what you’ll be going up against. You know that as well as I do.”

  Caitlin didn’t bother refuting the point, not after Cort Wesley had told her about Jones being taken off the map. With him went the endless supply of gunmen Guillermo Paz usually had at his disposal. And they might well be going up against an army. She hadn’t told Captain Tepper what she was thinking, because he would have either ordered her off or insisted she wait for the cavalry to arrive. But there was no time, not anymore, not with what Cort Wesley had uncovered about the real contents of that ossuary thought to contain the bones of Christ.

  Caitlin leaned over and undid the rubbery bonds holding Nola in place.

  “Thanks for trusting me, Sis,” Nola said, shaking the blood back into her hands.

  “There’s a difference between trust and necessity.”

  “He took my guns,” Nola said, gaze cocked toward Paz. “And you’re right to trust me, because I’d never hurt you, the sister I’m meeting for the first time.”

  “You mean like your mother would never kill her husband, Hector?”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Is it?”

  Caitlin could see Nola’s eyes wavering, no longer fixed like a sniper rifle’s scope.

  “And here’s something else for you to consider. The contents of those ossuaries your mother’s been after for twenty-five years? Those bones are no more Christ’s than the ones you picked out of your salmon the other night at dinner. So if you want to go home empty-handed, with your tail between your legs, to give her the bad news, be my guest.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick around. See if you’re as good as I’ve heard.”

  A truck rumbled into the driveway. Caitlin recognized it, from the headlights pouring through the window, as Cort Wesley’s. She looked back toward Guillermo Paz.

  “Give her back her guns, Colonel.”

  * * *

  “You okay to drive?” she asked Cort Wesley through the window.

  “I drove here, didn’t I? What you really want to know is if I’m up to handling a gun, if this comes down to shooting.”

  “The way it always does.”

  “In special ops training, we were taught to fire with a single arm—either arm.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “So was last week.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “The arm’s better, Ranger. Not all the way back, but better. And, who knows, maybe we won’t need to go to guns this time.”

  Caitlin nodded, regarded his right hand poised atop the steering wheel again. “I wouldn’t count on it, Cort Wesley.”

  93

  SPINNAKER FALLS, TEXAS

  Dawn was just breaking when Cort Wesley’s truck bounced over the uneven desert ground toward the old Spanish mission occupied by undocumented immigrants, the “illegals” who, first under Frank Aidman and then under his son, Daniel, had stood vigil over the spot where they’d helped Jim Strong bury four bodies and three crates twenty-five years before.

  As they thumped across the rocky terrain, kicking up stray gravel in their wake, Caitlin couldn’t help but think of a similar scene in 1994, of Jim Strong rattling along as best he could in D. W. Tepper’s shot-up pickup truck.

  “We’ve gotta hope they didn’t beat us here,” Cort Wesley noted.

  “They didn’t,” said Caitlin.

  “How can you know that?”

  Instead of answering, Caitlin looked toward Paz in the front passenger seat of the cab.

  “She’s right, outlaw,” he said, without turning around. “And the big man, the one with no face, is coming. I understand what I’ve been feeling now.”

  “I wish we had your men with us right now, Colonel.”

  Paz appeared not at all perturbed by their absence. “The great painter Vincent van Gogh once said, ‘Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.’ The same can hold true for people. As Plato believed, ‘A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.’”

  “Does he always talk like that, Sis?” Nola asked Caitlin.

  “Don’t call me that. And he’s killed even more people than you have, a lot more, so he can talk any way he wants.”

  Paz still hadn’t turned from the front seat. His gaze was fixed intently out the windshield, toward the mission. Caitlin caught Cort Wesley eyeballing her in the rearview mirror yet again, his shoulders and neck both held stiffly, as he continued trying to make sense of all she’d told him on the way, to reconcile it with the knowledge he’d gained firsthand at the CDC.

  The trench fire that had been burning for years now had a peculiar beauty when, off in the distance, it was cast against the morning sun, the grayish-black smoke shaded amber at the edges. Caitlin could feel the strong breeze outside rattle Cort Wesley’s truck, stoking flickers of life from the long-untended wind turbines.

  “Looks like
the Alamo,” Cort Wesley said, as the mission sharpened in view.

  “Here’s hoping the metaphor stops there.”

  “Yeah,” he groused, “good luck with that.” He finally twisted his gaze toward her in the backseat, eyes brushing over Nola Delgado as if seeing her for the first time. “Tell me again why we’re here?”

  “The people in there have been watching that site ever since 1994, when my father first buried the missing ossuaries. Bane Sturgess dug those crates out of the desert, and those people must’ve followed them back to New Braunfels and stole the bone boxes, after the four men we found dead were stupid enough to open one of them.”

  “Releasing those plague spores again, which means…” Cort Wesley said, letting his thought dangle there for Caitlin to finish.

  Caitlin joined him in gazing toward the mission. “Which means the crates must still be inside,” she completed.

  Cort Wesley nodded. “So a fanatical religious order is after a weapon that can kill anyone and everyone. What could go wrong?”

  That left Nola shaking her head, stopping just short of a laugh. “You people should really listen to yourselves sometime.”

  “Welcome to our world,” Caitlin told her.

  “Just tell me when I can start shooting.”

  94

  SPINNAKER FALLS, TEXAS

  The mission gates jerked open as they approached, Daniel Aidman standing there to greet their arrival. Some of the people Caitlin recalled from the other day were already at work tending to the garden and harvesting what looked like tomatoes. A few men stood back a bit, suspicious of her presence, holding their ground with a confidence that suggested that the shirts flapping outside their belts in the stiff breeze concealed pistols.

  “I got your message,” Aidman said to Caitlin, when she stepped down out of the truck.

  “Any sign of them?” she asked him, while Paz moved to the covered cargo bed to retrieve the duffel bag he had stowed there.

  Aidman shook his head. “Not yet. Let me get this straight. You’re saying these are the same people from my father’s time, the same people behind the four men your father killed here in ninety-four?”